He Made Purification of Sins

Maundy Thursday

In eternity we're going to sing on and on and on and it will be
never-ending joy, ever-deepening joy. On a dark night like this
Maundy Thursday we want to remember how it is that we got such a
promise, sinners like us. So let's turn to Hebrews 1:1–4. We'll
look again at those verses we saw on Sunday morning. We'll take one
phrase tonight and focus on it.

God, after he spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in
many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us
in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also
He made the world. He is the radiance of His glory and the exact
representation of his nature and upholds all things by the word of
his power. When he had made purification of sins, He sat down at
the right hand of the Majesty on high; having become as much better
than angels, as He has inherited a more excellent name than
they.

"When He Had Made Purification of Sins"

Let's consider that phrase in verse 3 for just a few minutes
before we eat together the Lord's Supper—"when he had
made purification of sins." And let's break it into three
parts.

"He"—there's a person here.

"Of
sins"—the problem that he had to deal with.

"Had
made purification."

We'll simply dwell on each of these and
then we'll go to the table together.

"He"

Let's start with the "He." Never forget that there's a
person here. There's a person who's alive, who laid down his
life—he loves, he thinks, he feels, he wills, and even today
he has a body. That body came down from that cross and when it rose
from the tomb, though it had special qualities about it, it was
recognized by his followers. They could touch it. It could eat fish
to prove that it was not a ghost. So there is a whole person whom
we're going to relate to forever and ever. He's alive today. He's
at the Father's right hand. He is personal. He promised never to
leave us or forsake us. He promised to be with us. He is here in
this room right now by his spirit listening to me. He is as close
to you as the person next to you. He is real. He is a person. He is
a he. He is there.

There are at least seven things said about him in these
verses.

1. He Is Real

Don't ever forget that.
Cultivate a relationship with this person. Put Jesus at the center
of your life. Relate to Jesus. Some of us became Christians through
a form of evangelism that was exactly right. It said, "Do you have
a personal relationship with Jesus?" That's the right question.
Sometimes we take it very lightly, but here's a person and he's
alive and he's here and he's in heaven. He can do that. And he's
glorious. Let's see how glorious he is because it's the
gloriousness of the glory of the person that makes the laying down
of his life so spectacularly valuable and assuring.

2. He Created

Through him all things
were made.

3. He Is the Radiance of the Father's Glory

So if you want to know the glory, the moral beauty of the glory
of the father, read the gospel and behold the person of Jesus
because he's the radiance (the streaming out, the effulgence) of
the glory of God.

4. He Is the Exact Character or Representation of the Father's Divine Nature

If you've seen me, you've seen the
father.

5. He Upholds the Universe

All
things—by the word of his power. So today this person is
infinitely powerful. He is speaking all the solar system, and all
the Milky Way, and all the other galaxies into being, as well as
all the molecules and all the wood and brick of this building. He's
holding our flesh and hair and skin and lungs and tissue and
fingernails in being right now. If he were to stop thinking you
into being, you would cease to be. That's how dependent you are on
this person.

6. He Sat Down at the Right Hand of the
Majesty

And the seating is an enthronement. He is the king
of the universe. He's at the right hand of God the Father and he
reigns over all government. He reigns over the devil. He reigns
over weather. He reigns over heart attacks and cancer and
Parkinson's disease. He reigns tonight.

7. Therefore He Is Greater Than the Angels

Sort of sounds like an anticlimax. But the rest of the chapter is
devoted to this—to the utter superiority of this person over
all other heavenly persons save the Father.

So that's number one—we are dealing tonight with a person.
He's alive. He's real and all seven of those facts are true about
him. That's the person who made purification.

"Of Sins"

Let's pick up the sin factor first. It's at the end of the
phrase—"made purification of sins." Sin is a
reality. It's a power in the world. When you read the book of
Romans, you have to come to terms with the fact that sin is not just
a little isolated thing we do here and there. It's not just deeds,
it's a power. It moves in the heart. It moves in the will. It moves
in the world. It takes hold. It's got a grip on every human being.
It's an awful thing. Everybody in this room is infected with
it.

Some have a remedy at work in their lives that will bring them
to glory. Perhaps some tonight don't. But we're all infected, like
a disease. And it's lethal. We will all die physically. He has not
willed to remove that aspect of the curse. We will all pass through
death unless Jesus returns first. So sin is a universal thing, a
horrid thing, a disease thing. Hebrews 3:14–19 defines it for
us—What is it? How bad is it?

We have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the
beginning of our assurance firm until the end; while it is said,
"Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as when
they provoked me." For who provoked Him when they had heard?
Indeed, did not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses? And
with whom was He angry for forty years? Was it not with those who
sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he
swear that they should not enter his rest, but to those who were
disobedient? And so we see that they were not able to enter because
of unbelief.

There are three things I want you to see here about sin so that
you can really come to terms with this.

1. Sin Is Rooted in Unbelief

I want you to
feel what sin is. All sin flows from a lack of trust in God. If we
had perfect trust in the wisdom and love and power of God, we would
not go against him so freely and so often as we do. So there's root
unbelief behind sin.

I spoke over at the university last night to a group of 250–300
students. There were some unbelievers there, and one young woman
came up afterwards and described her situation to me. She asked me
if I thought she was guilty. I told here what I tell almost
everybody who asks me that: "probably you were, at least in part."
And I said, "The reason I say that to you, rather than making you
feel good by saying it was probably all their fault, is because the
gospel is not a message that tells us we are not guilty for what
we've done. The gospel is a message that tells us there is a guilt
remover." If we try to make ourselves feel good by saying, "I
wasn't guilty for that. I didn't do anything or I'm not the problem
in this relationship," we short-circuit the gospel. The gospel is
for people who know how bad they are, who feel bad about it, who
know that they had a hand in the messed-up relationship, who know
they're making choices that are wrong. And the sane thing is to say
to God, "Yes, I'm guilty of that." And to have God answer back, "I
have made a provision."

2. There's Disobedience

You see that in verse
18—"those who were disobedient." There's a will of God and
we've gone against the will of God and we've disobeyed.

3. God Is Angry with Sin

We are very quick in
the 20th century to say that God is a loving God. They were very
quick in the 18th century to say that God is an angry God. Sinners
in the hands of an angry God. And both of these things are
absolutely true. Depending on where you are between the 18th and
20th centuries you need to hear one of those messages or the other.
My guess is that most of us live in the 20th century and we have
heard very often that God is love, God is love, God is love, and we
have not dwelt very long on fact that God is against sin. He is
angry at sin. God is angry every day, Psalm 2 says. He is angry
every day at sin.

I read a very good article that helped me
understand this. It argued that the cross is the outflow of the
anger of God—not just of the love of God, but of the anger of
God. The cross is the fruit of the wrath of God against sin. Why is
that true? The anger that he feels against sin is what brought his
Son to suffering and death; but if he had had another way to deal
with sin, he would have done it another way. The cross is an
expression of two things, not just one thing. A just anger, and an
incredible mercy towards sinners. So let's not short-circuit the
gospel tonight. Let's reckon with the truth—we're sinners and
God is angry at sin. Sin is a great offense against him.

"Had Made Purification"

And now finally we see the gospel in this word
"purification." Verse 3, "when he had made purification of
sins." I want
you to see something in the words "had made" and I
want you to see something in the word "purification." The main
thing in "had made" is that from the perspective of this writer,
and from Christ's having taken his seat at the right hand of God,
the work of purifying your sins is totally finished. It is so
important to understand this—"had made." Not "is making." Not
"will make." Not "at the Lord's table when you eat this he makes
purification"—no! He had made it and then he sat down.
That's one thing and it's over. The enthronement of Christ is an
honor and a tribute to the work and finishedness of that work. I
want you to feel that tonight.

The purification that was made was made once for all. Don't
think, "I sinned a long time in my life and then I found Christ and
I believed and he interposed his blood and he cleaned up the first
half of my life. Now I'm living a little bit by faith and still
sinning." Don't think that way! The interposition of the blood was
2,000 years ago, never repeated, finished, for all your
sins—for the sin that you will commit on your dying day a
year from now or 40, 50, 60 years from now. The purification of
that sin happened 2,000 years ago. So this is an awesome gospel. Yes
it is open to great abuses. Paul had to deal with those abuses, "Oh
well, let's sin that grace may abound!" But he was willing to risk
it. So was the writer to the Hebrews. Jesus has made purification
for sin. It's finished. A decisive thing happened to all your sins
at Calvary. It doesn't get repeated at this table.

Let's walk through several texts to see that I'm not just
picking out something that I like to emphasize. I'm picking out
something to emphasize which this writer to the Hebrews loves with
all his heart. I want you to see that. (See also Hebrews 7:26–27,
9:11–12, 9:25–26.)

(I'm going to insert a little parenthesis here that's
theologically controversial. I want you to consider it—not to
settle it tonight, but to consider. One of the points of Reformed
theology is definite atonement. Definite atonement means that when
Christ died—the decisive putting away of sin—he did for
his own people and not for everybody. It does not mean that he
didn't die for everybody in one sense, that is, of making the
atonement available to all who believe. But what I'm reading here
will simply not make sense if you try to apply it to everybody. Sin
has not been put away for everybody. There's not an eternal
redemption for everybody. Purification has not been finished for
everybody. There is a sweet covenant bond between the bride and the
bridegroom by which an effectual work was wrought on Calvary for
the bride that is effectual and finished so that the bride is
wholly clean.

It's a controversial issue I know and I don't insist
that you understand or embrace it entirely. But you'll know where I
am and why I love these texts—because I am the bride of
Christ—because the covenant he made with me (and not with the
world) at the cost of his own blood to make me his bride is very
precious. The love that he has for you and me as a covenant people
is so precious and it is rooted in a finished, effectual, full, and
complete putting away of our sins once for all on the cross, which
has not been done for the world. It has been done for the bride. We
need to feel the preciousness of that. Otherwise we're going to
feel like, "Well, I am forgivable tonight like the world is
forgivable, but maybe not much more." Now that is the end of the
parenthesis, and I commend your study of it for years to
come.)

Inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this
comes judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear
the sins of many shall appear a second time for salvation without
reference to sin for those who are eagerly waiting for him.
(Hebrews 9:27–28)

You know who I think the "many" are—the bride, you and me,
believers.

By this we have been sanctified through the offering of the body
of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews 10:10)

Your sanctification was purchased fully in the offering of
Christ once for all.

And every priest stands daily ministering and offering time
after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; but
He having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at
the right hand of God . . . (Hebrews 10:11–12)

One offering. Once for all. For all sin. And it is finished.

By one offering he has perfected for all time those who are
sanctified. (Hebrews 10:14)

The tenses of the verbs are so important. He has
perfected. That's a perfect—he did it, it is finished, and
the fruits abide. The next one is a present tense. Those who
are being sanctified. So this is the marvel of Hebrews
10:14: all those who by faith have been united to Christ, who have
had the holy spirit indwell them, and who are progressively having
their sins defeated are perfect people before God now because of
the blood of Jesus. Finished. If you are progressively being
perfected, you are perfected before the Father. If you are
progressively being sanctified and overcoming sins, though not yet
perfect in moral form here, that is the evidence of union with
Christ. All he achieved is now made over to you by covenant. The
Father looks upon you as wholly accepted and perfected in the
Beloved. If you can grasp that, if you can live in that triumph,
what a life you will live! I commend it to you tonight.

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books.

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